Logistics business Wincanton plc has reported “encouraging revenue growth of 5.5%” during its third quarter period.
The Group has continued to trade in line with expectations across all four business sectors, with the pipeline of new business opportunities continuing to increase.
Group revenue for Q3 was lower year-on-year by 1.4% against tough comparatives. The Group’s Grocery & Consumer sector fell by 7.0% whilst the General Merchandise sector remained broadly flat (+0.6%), both in comparison to the record highs seen in Q3 FY22.
Wincanton, which provides services for furniture retailers including Loaf, Dwell, DFS, IKEA and The White Company, said that its eFulfilment sector revenue increased by 13.6% in the third quarter driven by new wins. While the performance in Cygnia remains robust, recent postal strikes and pressure on discretionary consumer spending meant that online volumes were below expectations for some customers.
“Over the last nine months, the UK’s economic, political, and labour environments have been particularly challenging, impacting both our top-line growth trajectory and our underlying cost base. We expect these difficult conditions to continue in FY24. Despite the volatility and headwinds in the external environment, our diversified customer base continues to offer resilience and the Board expects the Group to report profit for the current year (FY23) in line with market expectations,” the company said.
James Wroath, Chief Executive Officer of Wincanton, added: “I would like to thank all my colleagues for their hard work and commitment, which has been so important to our performance over the festive period and throughout Q3 trading. We remain focussed on driving growth with both new and existing customers; our strong pipeline is critical to Wincanton’s ability to negate the challenging external environment that we are facing.
“We continue to make great strides in supporting our technology propositions for customers, including automation and robotics, and this is supporting strong operational delivery across the Group.”
